


Constellations

by jillyfae



Series: Incorrigible [8]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It's Hard to Recover From Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8402776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillyfae/pseuds/jillyfae
Summary: Living is harder than dying. (Shepard knows. She's done both.) Sometimes you need some help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/gifts).



Ella Shepard loved the stars

Growing up, she had old (actual paper) books of the constellations on Earth and memorized them all, compared them to the ones on Mindoir

Some of the same stars showed up, in entirely different places, framing entirely different shapes, different brightnesses, different twinkles.

In the year after the Raid she broke two doors, (three fingers), one skylight; she had to see the stars where she was sleeping.

Her electives at the Academy were mostly astrogation, navigation; the only history class she aced was astronomy.

She memorized Relays, routes, stations.

She held the galaxy in her dreams.

* * *

 

Jeff Moreau hated ceilings.

Smooth steel of temporary station housing, dot-filled squares of medbays’ dropped panels, fake textures of _permanent_ station housing; by far the worst were the cartoon stickers in pediatrician’s offices, as if that would fool a kid into thinking he wasn’t still sick.

But the entire galaxy was outside his window, always shifting and spinning, around and around and around.

He watched ships dock, and load, and leave, and come back again.

He had lists of shuttle schedules, troop transports, shipping layovers, colony beginnings, and endings, and beginnings again.

But he was never on them. School, or surgery, or recovery from surgery, or the latest drug gave him motion sickness, or the next trial started in a week.

No one else’s schedule ever fit his.

Maybe he’d just make his own.

He memorized engine stats and controller layouts, read emergency procedures and routine maintenance logs, begged, borrowed, or bought every flight-sim on the market.

He learned how to see the path between the stars, how to settle comfortably in the darkness and let it lead him where he needed to go.

In his dreams he could fly, long before he got the Alliance’s wings.

* * *

At first it was her job.

Nav back-up on a brand new ship, sitting behind the pilot plotting courses, fastest or quietest or the least amount of fuel needed to get from point a to point c without stopping at point b.

But that never took a whole shift, even with alternate routes to alternate destinations, and the Flight Lieutenant was good enough to have figured them all out himself anyways.

So they started figuring out other routes. The worst way to get wherever they were going next. How to get through Alliance space without using Arcturus. How to visit the Elcor without the Volus seeing your ship. (Without using the stealth drive, of course. That would be cheating.) Started figuring out the next leg without the computer, memory and experience and too damn many hours in front of a nav screen finally being good for something.

The challenges kept getting more and more complicated, twisty routes between stars and planets, smooth lines through the dark, shining silver in her imagination, criss-crossing the galaxy in her mind.

It was one of her favorite games, an endless joke that no one else got, a message across the ship, or over the comms, a coda at the end of a midnight snack or bitter morning coffee. A new set of coordinates, a planet, a Relay, and a new path through the endless maze of the galaxy.

Always another turn, always another trip.

Until she died.

* * *

 

She had told him once, over a midnight cup of chocolate when neither of them could sleep, about the House after the Raid, about too few windows and walls closing in and tunnels collapsing and too many airlocks and not enough air.

He was jealous that he couldn’t do what she had done, didn’t have the bones to batter down a door until he could find a way out.

He’d never not been able to see a way out. But he’d broken his wings, _broken hers_ , couldn’t fly, _couldn’t walk, couldn’t crawl_ , stuck on a stool staring at a dingy ceiling in a dingier bar, one that probably hadn’t been clean even before they built it.

There was no making up for what he’d done, what he hadn’t, and he wasn’t quite sure why he kept getting up every morning.

Except the Doc kept calling or dropping by to check on him.

Except he could picture the look on Shepard’s face if he didn’t.

Except he couldn’t forget the shape of the ship that had helped him kill her, and for all he checked every newsfeed, every Council Meeting’s minutes, every ship’s log he could hack into, ( _elcor ships had weird camera placements_ ), he couldn’t _find it_.

But he didn’t know what else to do.

Until she wasn’t dead.

* * *

 

It was hard to sleep, after waking up as Lazarus.

Hard to sleep on a bed instead of an Alliance rack, hard to sleep in a room too big, _too small_ , impossible to sleep with the weight of space above her. The galaxy in her dreams was terrifying, cold and endless, and she’d try each night to find a way out, try to find steel to put between her and sharp distant lights, try and fail and wake up, too scared to scream, throat dry and mouth wide and gasping.

She’d pace the ship again, a different ship, the wrong shape, the wrong weight to fly in the darkness, but a familiar voice, still, leaning back in his chair, sharp eyes and a crooked smile and old music playing softly as third shift passed around them.

Sometimes she’d relax, at last, and close her eyes and listen to the quiet, and almost remember how to sleep.

Until the night she really did doze off, and curled the wrong way, and opened her eyes while she faced the open shutters.

_Black and cold and black and cold and cold …_

She tried to scramble back, too hard, too fast, hip catching on the arm of her chair, chest heaving and breath so loud she couldn’t feel her heartbeat, couldn’t hear the sound she made as she fell, ass against the curving edge of a console, an awkward slide to the deck itself. Her eyes burned and she couldn’t breathe, _so cold it burns,_ and she bit her tongue as hard as she could, closed her eyes so tight she could see the flare of light in the darkness behind her lids, could distract herself from the real darkness _out there,_ light so pale and sharp it cut, _it killed._

She tried to slide back, scoot against the ground, felt a whimper in her throat, felt her back hit metal. Startled herself enough she gasped, and opened her eyes, and realized the shutters were closed.

She stared right at them, even lines of metal visible beyond the glass, one after another after another, and reached her hand back to feel what had stopped her; it was the airlock door, sealed tight.

She breathed out a sigh, slow and ragged, and made herself breathe in, tasted ship’s air, tepid and metallic.

“Need me to call the Doc?”

Joker’s voice was soft, _so soft,_ and she shook her head.

Too quickly, she realized, by the shape his eyebrows made as he looked at her, but she couldn’t, _couldn’t_. Not yet.

“For that bruise on your hip, babe.” His voice twisted, dry and teasing, but his eyes stayed clear and steady. “I heard the impact, it’s gonna be one of the good ones.”

She startled herself with the feel of a smile, small and crooked, but there nonetheless, and felt her shoulders relax, just a little. “Wouldn’t you rather be the one to kiss it and make it better?”

His eyes went too wide, _that’s not something we say, not here, not yet,_ and his lips parted but no sound came out.

She blinked, and his smile was back, and his eyes were dark, and he spread his arms wide, his voice sharp and biting. “Anytime, darling.”

She half crawled, half dragged herself over, and up, and into his lap, more braced on the chair arms than his legs, her head resting above his shoulder, leather against her ear. There at last, his arms settled around her and he hummed, low and soft, and her eyes closed and she sighed, slow and even. “Thank you, Joker.”

“Anytime, darling,” he repeated, a whisper so secret she almost couldn’t hear it. Her fingers curled into fists, the only way she could keep them still, keep herself quiet; but the galaxy in her head was dim at last.

The next night he had a job for her, nav points and fuel stats.

She smiled and got to work.

It started slow, only one trip, a route or two, but it wasn’t so many nights until the game started again, twists and turns and journeys back and forth, back and forth, until there were lines crossing the stars in her thoughts, clear and shining, framing it, holding it, keeping it in her head where it belonged.

Until one day she mentioned the shape of it all, the curve of Mindoir’s Chariot here, Earth’s Pegasus there. And Joker grinned, so bright she almost ducked her head to shade her eyes, and he changed the game.

He started another route, but it didn’t make sense, backtracking and burning fuel and a slingshot around a particularly empty solar system just to go back the way he’d come …

Until she closed her eyes, and saw a tangle of lines and one long curve, and tilted her head, and shifted her center, and there, at last, a familiar shape, Mindoir’s Harpist, the one that came lifting up over the horizon every spring.

For the first time since she died, she felt the tears spill past her eyes, cool trails down her cheeks. Joker’s hand settled on hers, and she felt the press of his fingers, the weight of his palm.

Ella turned her hand beneath his, wrapped her fingers ‘round and opened her eyes and _pulled._ (Just a little.) He leaned forward, as did she, until her nose almost bumped against his. “Thank you,” she whispered, feeling his breath against her mouth, feeling her own as it got caught between them. She squeezed her fingers tighter, just a little more, and closed her eyes, and followed that one last whisper of breath to let her lips touch his, softly, _softly,_ and her body felt warm as she leaned back, her chest warm all the way through, no whisper of cold down her throat, or her back.

Joker’s hand squeezed back, and then slipped free, and his eyes shifted to look up to the camera on the ceiling, and she lifted her head and stuck her tongue out at it.

“Feeling better?”

She looked back at him as he spoke, and felt something almost like a grin, almost a laugh building somewhere beneath her heart. “How could I not be?”

He pursed his lips, a quick almost kiss blown between them. “Then it’s your turn. Where you gonna take us next?”


End file.
